Apart from the lessons, the manual will also have activities to assess the knowledge of students on the topics covered. It is meant for secondary and senior secondary level students.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has launched a cyber security handbook to ensure safe and healthy digital habits among students. The HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal tweeted, saying that the handbook has been prepared to aware students from classes 9 to 12 about various aspects of cyber security.

CBSE has prepared a ‘Cyber Security Handbook’ to make students from class 9th to 12th aware about cyber security. This handbook is available at the CBSE website, the minister tweeted.

The new module will cover topics in cyber safety, such as cyberbullying, including social exclusion, intimidation, defamation, and emotional harassment, online sexual abuse, cyber radicalisation, online attack and fraus, and online enticement. It will also introduce the nine elements of digital citizenship — digital access, literacy, communication, etiquette, health and wellbeing, rights, freedom and responsibility, security and law.

Apart from the lessons, the manual will also have activities to assess the knowledge of students on the topics covered. The manual, to be launched in collaboration with the Cyber Peace Foundation, is meant for secondary and senior secondary level students.

“Many young people are confident in using a wide range of technologies and often turn to the internet for information,” the board noted, “but the confidence with digital technology can also be misleading.”

“Many of them frequently struggle when applying them to research tasks. They can find it difficult to work out whether information on an unfamiliar website is trustworthy, and rely on their chosen search engine’s rankings for their selection of material. They may not understand how search terms work or of the powerful commercial forces that can result in a particular company being top of the search engine’s list. They may not be aware of the lurking risks and threats and the fact that some of their actions can invite them trouble,” the board said.